Friday, July 30, 2010

Oooh, Russians Probing Canadian Airspace? Oooh, Scary!

If the Russians really wanted to probe Canadian airspace, as DefMin Peter MacKay likes to pretend, about the worst way to go about it would be to send over a Tupolev TU-95 Bear bomber and at high altitude no less.

The problem with probing anything with the Bear is the Bear itself. In service since 1955 it's old. It's old and huge. It has four enormous engines turning enormous, counter-rotating propellers. That's a total of 32-enormous steel propeller blades spinning about giving this beast the radar cross section of a battleship. When the Russkies designed the Bear, stealth was not a consideration.

In effect, the Bear announces its presence well before it gets anywhere near Canadian airspace. The Russians put in an appearance, check how long it takes for a Canadian fighter to intercept, and then head home. No matter how much Peter MacKay wants to hype the event, the Russkies are hardly probing our defences. If they wanted to do that they might fly a much different profile with a far better aircraft.

If Russian invades us we will have welcome party for them at Yellowknife. Do you really think we have hope in hell to rebuff Russia?

However, I don't see any reason for them to invade us. Yes there could be dispute over resources in the Northern waters but I don't see any war coming. Harpo and company are just hyping it up to divert attention from other problems that Canada faces. I am more afraid of Cons than Russia.

I could see the Americans wanting to oust Russia from Canadian territory but I'm not sure that would amount to "defending" us. We're simply too valuable a prize for us to be naive about any other nation's altruism toward Canada.

Thanks, Anon, but you're full of shit. Were the Russians ever to decide to attack us it would be a saturation attack with their latest, long-range cruise missiles launched well outside Canadian airspace.

And if Canada is left with a maximum ready force of about 40 F-35s (probably 20 would be a push), saturating our defences would be child's play.